Flourishing chemosynthetic life at the greatest depths of hadal trenches

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Peng, Xiaotong; Du, Mengran; Gebruk, Andrey; Liu, Shuangquan; Gao, Zhaoming; Glud, Ronnie N.; Zhou, Peng; Wang, Ruoheng; Rowden, Ashley A.; Kamenev, Gennady M.; Maiorova, Anastassya S.; Papineau, Dominic; Chen, Shun; Gao, Jinwei; Liu, Helu; He, Yuan; Alalykina, Inna L.; Dolmatov, Igor Yu.; Zhang, Hanyu; Li, Xuegong; Malyutina, Marina V.; Dasgupta, Shamik; Saulenko, Anastasiia A.; Shilov, Vladimir A.; Liu, Shuting; Xie, Tongtong; Qu, Yuangao; Song, Xikun; Zhang, Haibin; Liu, Hao; Zhang, Weijia; Huang, Xiaoxia; Xu, Hongzhou; Xu, Wenjing; Mordukhovich, Vladimir V.; Adrianov, Andrey V.
• 署名单位: Chinese Academy of Sciences; Institute of Deep-Sea Science & Engineering, CAS; Russian Academy of Sciences; Shirshov Institute of Oceanology; University of Southern Denmark; National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) - New Zealand; Victoria University Wellington; Russian Academy of Sciences; National Scientific Center of Marine Biology, Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• 刊物名称: Nature
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0028-1747
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09317-z
• 发表日期: 2025-09-18
• 关键词: deep-sea; japan trench; cold seeps; hydrothermal vents; phase-equilibrium; methane hydrate; sediments; gases; communities; origins

摘要

Hadal trenches, some of the Earth's least explored and understood environments, have long been proposed to harbour chemosynthesis-based communities1,2. Despite increasing attention, actual documentation of such communities has been exceptionally rare3,4. Here we report the discovery of the deepest and the most extensive chemosynthesis-based communities known to exist on Earth during an expedition to the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench and the western Aleutian Trench using the manned submersible Fendouzhe. The communities dominated by siboglinid Polychaeta and Bivalvia span a distance of 2,500 km at depths from 5,800 m to 9,533 m. These communities are sustained by hydrogen sulfide-rich and methane-rich fluids that are transported along faults traversing deep sediment layers in trenches, where methane is produced microbially from deposited organic matter, as indicated by isotopic analysis. Given geological similarities with other hadal trenches, such chemosynthesis-based communities might be more widespread than previously anticipated. These findings challenge current models of life at extreme limits and carbon cycling in the deep ocean.